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Small Wars, Big Data

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Small Wars, Big Data

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  • 7.  Charles C. Krulak, “The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War,” Marines Magazine, January 1999, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/strategic_corporal.html, accessed 6 November 2015. (Location 6091)
  • 22.  The first RCT of a drug was published in 1948, and the first RCTs of social policies in the United States took place in the mid-1970s. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton used them to evaluate welfare reform, but it wasn’t until the 2000s that large-scale RCTs gained wide attention by showing that some long-standing, big-budget programs (such as Head Start, the preschool program for disadvantaged children) had little or no measurable effect, as implemented. For a brief history, see David Bornstein, “The Dawn of the Evidence-Based Budget,” New York Times, 30 May 2012, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/worthy-of-government-funding-prove-it/?_r=0, accessed 24 February 2016. For a discussion of the problems with running policy RCTs, see Angus Deaton, “Instruments, Randomization, and Learning about Development,” Journal of Economic Literature 48, no. 2 (2010): 424–55. The early 2000s saw a dramatic increase in the use of RCTs to test programs in developing countries. Milestones included the 2003 founding of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, which sought to promote and organize RCTs for poverty reduction (https://www.povertyactionlab.org), and the creation of an RCT registry in 2012 by the American Economic Association (https://www.socialscienceregistry.org). Barack Obama substantially expanded the use of RCTs for federal programs, along with other evidence-based measures such as “tiered evidence” grant programs, Pay-for-Success initiatives, and the establishment of the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team. Tom Kalil, “Funding What Works: The Importance of Low-Cost Randomized Controlled Trials,” The White House blog, 9 July 2014, https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/07/09/funding-what-works-importance-low-cost-randomized-controlled-trials, accessed 24 February 2016. (Location 6261)
  • 2.  The model is laid out in detail in Eli Berman, Jacob N. Shapiro, and Joseph H. Felter, “Can Hearts and Minds Be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq,” Journal of Political Economy 119, no. 4 (2011): 766–819. It was inspired by a model describing why communities endure, and even support, criminal gangs: George Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen, “Gang Behavior, Law Enforcement, and Community Values,” in Values and Public Policy, ed. Henry J. Aaron, Thomas E. Mann, and Timothy Taylor (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994). (Location 6328)
  • Andrew Shaver and Jacob N. Shapiro, “The Effect of Civilian Casualties on Wartime Informing: Evidence from the Iraq War” (Households in Conflict Network Working Paper #210, 2016). The paper was later published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution under the same title. (Location 7368)

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title: Small Wars, Big Data longtitle: Small Wars, Big Data author: Eli Berman, Joseph H. Felter, Jacob N. Shapiro url: , source: kindle last_highlight: 2019-12-15 type: books tags:

Small Wars, Big Data

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Metadata

Highlights

  • 7.  Charles C. Krulak, “The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War,” Marines Magazine, January 1999, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/strategic_corporal.html, accessed 6 November 2015. (Location 6091)
  • 22.  The first RCT of a drug was published in 1948, and the first RCTs of social policies in the United States took place in the mid-1970s. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton used them to evaluate welfare reform, but it wasn’t until the 2000s that large-scale RCTs gained wide attention by showing that some long-standing, big-budget programs (such as Head Start, the preschool program for disadvantaged children) had little or no measurable effect, as implemented. For a brief history, see David Bornstein, “The Dawn of the Evidence-Based Budget,” New York Times, 30 May 2012, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/worthy-of-government-funding-prove-it/?_r=0, accessed 24 February 2016. For a discussion of the problems with running policy RCTs, see Angus Deaton, “Instruments, Randomization, and Learning about Development,” Journal of Economic Literature 48, no. 2 (2010): 424–55. The early 2000s saw a dramatic increase in the use of RCTs to test programs in developing countries. Milestones included the 2003 founding of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT, which sought to promote and organize RCTs for poverty reduction (https://www.povertyactionlab.org), and the creation of an RCT registry in 2012 by the American Economic Association (https://www.socialscienceregistry.org). Barack Obama substantially expanded the use of RCTs for federal programs, along with other evidence-based measures such as “tiered evidence” grant programs, Pay-for-Success initiatives, and the establishment of the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team. Tom Kalil, “Funding What Works: The Importance of Low-Cost Randomized Controlled Trials,” The White House blog, 9 July 2014, https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/07/09/funding-what-works-importance-low-cost-randomized-controlled-trials, accessed 24 February 2016. (Location 6261)
  • 2.  The model is laid out in detail in Eli Berman, Jacob N. Shapiro, and Joseph H. Felter, “Can Hearts and Minds Be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq,” Journal of Political Economy 119, no. 4 (2011): 766–819. It was inspired by a model describing why communities endure, and even support, criminal gangs: George Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen, “Gang Behavior, Law Enforcement, and Community Values,” in Values and Public Policy, ed. Henry J. Aaron, Thomas E. Mann, and Timothy Taylor (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994). (Location 6328)
  • Andrew Shaver and Jacob N. Shapiro, “The Effect of Civilian Casualties on Wartime Informing: Evidence from the Iraq War” (Households in Conflict Network Working Paper #210, 2016). The paper was later published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution under the same title. (Location 7368)